<p>Papa Chicken, I love statistics and numbers. However, that does not stop me for criticizing the US News on many counts, with the major being their attempt to provide a ranked listing. On the other hand, I dind their underlying data and their compilation to be well worth its price. </p>
<p>I do not think that checking the diversity -or what I would call the demographics- of a school is meaningless. Quite to the contrary, as it helped me eliminating a great number of schools that did not fit my own criteria. However, I still believe that one has to analyze the composition of an index such as yours to find much "meaning." Again, a school such as Wellesley, may have a diversity index of 59% (USNews), but the composition of that index reveals a school that only someone with a vivid imagination could consider to be diverse. </p>
<p>that 7% unreported may be the most diverse of all, as most students i know w/ a diverse background all their own shy away from choosing one race.... one i know crosses all races out and writes in HUMAN. colleges seem to be trying, nothing's perfect... also, imho, as long as colleges & universities take a higher percentage of the minority races who apply than the % majority races, the fault cannot really lie w/ them...</p>
<p>My family is of mixed race and ethnicity and high socioeconomic status. Socioeconomic status does not make everyone in that position the same. Racial bias regardless of socioeconomic status becomes evident when kids with brown skin reach dating age, even if you treat this issue matter-of-factly. The only way to achieve true muticultural, mutiracial integration is to live in close proximity or with people of different races and cultures. Ditto with different religions, different socioeconomic statuses, and the other areas that can divide people even in subtle, hard-to-see ways. For these reasons, I think that all kinds of diversity are an important factor when evaluating a school. I do agree that somewhat lower numbers can be made up by the fact of an integrated student body, just as high diversity numbers don't mean as much if there is a lot of segregation, as in some of the Universities of California. You get a sense of this by living on a college campus for 1-2 days. Papa chicken, I think you said in your original post that not too small was O.K. Along with the LAC's, you could consider evaluating mid-sized universities that will increase the possibilities without going really huge.</p>
<p>mediums are on the possibility list, but he then gets out of the D3 sport he thinks he wants to try to play (the medium sized colleges are not D3, at least in his sport).....a balancing act of priorities.....</p>
<p>I know the op asked about small colleges, but someone said, "Harvard is the most diverse of the universities (34% Af-Am, Asian-Am, Hispanic)". I suggest he look at Stanford, which has, I think, less than 50% white, US students. It's true that California has more Asians and Hispanics and possibly Native Americans than some places, but California and the entire West has a significantly smaller percentage of African-Americans than does Stanford.</p>
<p>On the question of decline to state, I suspect it includes quite a number of Asian-Americans, who see that many top schools (not necessarily Stanford or LACs) seem to have a limiting asian quota.</p>
<p>Most selective small LAC's try to have a diverse student body. Don't rely on the numbers. They are (a) subject to manipulation to enhance institutional image; and (b) less important, as many have noted here, than the campus culture. One of my children went to a school known for its diversity but so rife with segregation, political correctness and self-censorship that there were no real benefits from its diversity, unless you consider cynicism a benefit. There's no substitute for a campus visit and conversations with current students to get a true reading on the educational value of diversity at a particular school. Diversity by the numbers is overrated.</p>
<p>"On the question of decline to state, I suspect it includes quite a number of Asian-Americans, who see that many top schools (not necessarily Stanford or LACs) seem to have a limiting asian quota."</p>
<p>Here we go again with a "report" of quotas and discrimination. I guess that repeating it enough times will move it from to bad fiction to simple fiction. :(</p>
<p>I don't have all the statistics and I'm white, so I have no axe to grind, but it seems anecdotally true. Do you really not believe it? Even if you don't, the immediate question is whether some applicants do.</p>
<p>I'm late to this discussion, and Xiggi is right that the whole Davidson thing has be hashed to death before. </p>
<p>My own observation based my D's experiences at Davidson: a black student was elected student body president the year before she arrived there; perhaps her best friend is an extraordinary young black woman from Chicago, who with my D, is one of the 3 Baker Scholars in her class; and my D has dated two young black men (one of whom I actually like, sort of, in contrast to the other boys of any origin who have deigned to date my daughters) without any "social consequences" (other than a broken heart in a break-up with one of them).</p>
<p>The numbers certainly show a less diverse place than many other LACs, but that may be explicable by many things other than "effort." Of course, history plays a role, as it always does. But isn't the more general conclusion that we should celebrate the "reality on the ground" that is happening pretty much everywhere, including the South. After 40 or 50 years of effort, sacrifice and bloodshed, our children seem to be headed in the right direction on the racism front. The few remaining knuckleheads are marginalized. </p>
<p>This may not help Papa Chicken much, but I tend to think our generation frets a bit more about racial diversity than our children do, and I'd like to think that's because we raised them to be colorblind and they actually listened to us. (I'm sure there's a more accurate sociological explanation that excludes parenting, but the result is the same.)</p>
<p>vadad-- thanks for your thoughtful comments. Through this thread & several others, I have learned much, particularly in how to approach the issue of diversity (yes, I think you are right about our generation's sensitivity), and with regard to Davidson's "progress" in particular. (I admit that I was very much a doubter.) On the latter, I now firmly believe that diversity is working "well" by my definition at Davidson, that by deduction, the school is committed to making it work, and that the latest (not-so-well-advertised) statistics actually show sizable numbers growth in some minority populations...steady progress, still below many other highly respected peers, but progress is progress & Davidson has a very different starting point. The only thing missing now IMO, now that my overall respect and comcomitant expectations of Davidson have grown, is a bolder statement of diversity mission signaling such institutional commitment to change, readable by outside folks like me preparing for a whopper of an investment. For a more verbose rendition of that explanation, please read the latter posts in:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=136033%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=136033</a></p>
<p>"Do you really not believe it? Even if you don't, the immediate question is whether some applicants do."</p>
<p>No, I really do NOT believe that asian applicants are victimized by quotas or any other numerical restrictions on their admissions numbers. Do I believe that all qualified asian applicants are accepted. Of course, not. But the issue that has remained unproven beyond the occasional anecdotes is if there are cases of discrimination resulting from the use of quotas. One way to look at it is that the absence of litigation in this particular context is particularly telling. With the abundance of legal eagles who would love to make a name for themselves, one immediate conclusion is that there is simply no case and that smoking gun is full of blanks. </p>
<p>What I do believe is that, under the complex system of a holistic approach, the asians suffer more from their lack of "uniqueness" than any other groups. This lack of uniqueness -for lack of better term- yields a number of candidates who in a redux of the Stepford Children saga are hard to separate from one another. Since we know that freshman classes are built with the planned objective of being well rounded, candidates who present attributes that are too similar do indeed suffer. Since we have debated this issue ad nauseam, there is little reason to repeat all the "known" attributes. Further, it should be noted that the same set of attributes DID work very well and for such a long time that asians have become over represented at almost all selective schools, and in some cases in grotesque proportions. There are limits to everything and admissions' gamesmanship is not immune to some limit.</p>
<p>I don't particularly want to debate it either, whether or not there is suspicious consistency in Ivy asian percentages.</p>
<p>But, again, the immediate question is whether at least some Asian applicants believe it. Why would whites be the only group that think they have reason to check "Decline to state."</p>
<p>"I don't particularly want to debate it either, whether or not there is suspicious consistency in Ivy asian percentages."</p>
<p>Believe me in that I understand the extent of the allegation and the strong suspicion that the percentage of admits/application has stabilized or reached a point of inflexion. However, there might a simpler reality in that there is simply no more room to grow and that this particular pool has yielded all it could. Not all applicants are created equal and it is given that larger pools cannot continue to be skewed to the extreme of the range. Also, I believe that when trying to establish a constant, it is important to look at the historical growth or decay. Can we state that the admission of asians at the hyper-selective schools has been ... stagnant over the past twenty years? How do the number of admission at the same school compare to the distribution of the overall population or the specifc high school graduate population. </p>
<p>The pendulum swings both way, and there are times when corrections are necessary. In this particular case, there is model that begs for scrutiny in California. From my vantage point, it is most definitely not one worth exporting nor emulating.</p>
<p>A relative of mine has a name that could easily belong to a black person. He wrote an essay about economic and cultural hardships overcome and declined to state his race (on a law school application). It didn't get him into Harvard, but he did OK. Who knows?</p>
<p>PapaChicken and others- as a late reader of this thread, just wanted to say how much I admire your frankness with each other. I guess as a caucasian whose son is a freshman at Hamilton I'd say that there the students seem to form relationships with others based on academic and EC interests. A few weeks ago, my husband and I were up for the choir musical and ate brunch in the dining hall on Sat and Sun. I was struck by the diversity of the groups of friends who joined each other at tables. But I wouldn't know how the minority students feel about the racial composition of the student body. My son worried about diversity when he applied to college last year, but in the end it was clear he wanted a smallish school good in music and Hamilton was the best fit of the places which admitted him. I would think you'd need to visit schools and talk to people there, but I would echo what some others have said about small LAC's affording opportunities to meet the various people who are there in the most natural way. We are all Hamilton boosters in our family now since our son is so very happy there and he is so excited intellectually, but I do think that it really is true that kids there are on the whole really nice to each other and that seems important. So, PapaChicken if Hamilton looks like a good fit for your son in other ways, go visit and talk to people.</p>
<p>Papa Chicken--
I've found this, along with many other CC threads, very illuminating, and I'm glad this discussion was a respectful one.
And with respect, I imagine you and I have diametrically opposite views of the importance of diversity, at least as I understand your use of the term. Personally, I find the emphasis placed on the matter by, say, UVA, as an example, to be offensive.<br>
But UVA is my local school, it is a wonderful school, it attracts many amazing students, it has a great atmosphere, and its faculty has a large number of members that are both brilliant scholars and brilliant teachers. I met my wife there, proposed to her in her Range room, and for that reason alone I'll always love the place. Like so many alums, we moved back to be near it later in our careers (in fact, we fled Baltimore ;). It's my dearest hope that D3 will be admitted there in a year or so; the kid bleeds orange and blue.
My point, I guess, is that despite what I find to be an wrong-headed, guilt-ridden, internally contradictory diversity policy from an often-wrong university administration, I don't think I have to like it for me to be very happy with my kid going to school there.
All the LAC's discussed here seem to be great choices. I'm sure you all will find the right match. I admire the effort you've put into your research. Good luck!</p>
<p>Diversity is overrated, though not because there is no value in it.</p>
<p>My observation is that even when a college campus has a diverse population and diversity-oriented programming, many ethnic groups tend to stick to their own kind, especially in study groups, the library, cafeteria, social outings and voluntary (non-freshman year) living situations.</p>
<p>A lot of people of color simply can't afford the private tuition & fees of a LAC, so I personally feel that a LAC with 25+% people of color is fairly diverse. This doesn't mean though that one's individual ethnic group will be well represented on a college campus with 25+% diversity.</p>
<p>But as others have stated, diversity is much more than just ethnicity. </p>
<p>People do come together just the separate themselves from others not like them.</p>